“Even dead, Jesus could work miracles.”
“It wasn’t a cup,” Kyot interrupted, “because the man who told me the story about Feirefiz also revealed that it was a stone fallen from the sky, lapis ex coelis, and if it was a cup it’s because it was carved from this celestial stone.”
“Then why wasn’t it the tip of the spear that pierced the holy bosom?”
the Poet asked. “Didn’t you say earlier that you saw an attendant carrying a bleeding spear? Well, what I see is not one but three attendants, each with a spear from which blood is streaming…. And then a man dressed like a bishop with a cross in his hand, borne on a chair by four angels, who put him down before the silver table where the spear now lies … Then two maidens carrying a charger with a man’s severed head on it, bathed in blood. And then the bishop who is officiating over the spear: he raises the Host, and in the Host the image of a babe can be seen! The spear is the portentous object, and it is a sign of power because it’s a sign of strength!” “No, the spear drips blood, but the drops fall into a cup, demonstrating
the miracle I was talking about,” Boron said. “It’s so simple….”
And he began to smile.
“That’s enough,” Baudolino said, dejected. “Let’s forget about the Grasal and go on.”
“My friends,” Rabbi Solomon said, with the detachment of a man who, being Jewish, was not greatly impressed by that sacred relic. “To have the Priest immediately make a gift of that significance seems exaggerated to me. And then, the reader of the letter could ask Frederick to display this wonder. All the same, we can’t exclude the possibility that the stories heard by Kyot and by Boron are in circulation in many regions, and so a hint would be enough, and a word to the wise would suffice. Don’t write Grasal, don’t write cup; use a less precise term. The Torah never refers to the most sublime things in a literal sense, but in a secret sense, so the devout reader must gradually guess what the Almighty, always may his holy name be
blessed, wanted to be understood at the end of time.”
Baudolino suggested: “Let’s say then that he is sending a casket, a coffer, an ark; let’s say accipe istam veram arcam, accept this true ark…” “Not bad,” Rabbi Solomon said. “It conceals and reveals at the same time. And it opens the path to the vortex of interpretation.” They continued writing.
If you would deign to come to our dominions, we would consider you the greatest and the most worthy member of our court, and you could enjoy all our riches. With these, which are abundant among us, you shall be then heaped if you choose to return to your empire. Remember you must die, and you will never sin.
After this pious recommendation, the Priest went on to describe his power.
“No humility,” Abdul urged. “The Priest stands so high that he can allow himself some haughtiness.”
Indeed. Baudolino had no qualms, and he dictated. That dominus dominatium surpassed in power all the kings of the earth, and his wealth was infinite, seventy-two kings paid him tribute, seventy-two provinces obeyed him, even if not all were Christian—and so Rabbi Solomon was satisfied, as they placed in the kingdom also the lost tribes of Israel. His sovereignty extended over the three Indias, his territories reached the most remote deserts, as far as the tower of Babel. Every month, at the king’s table, seven kings were served, sixty-two dukes, and three hundred and sixty-five counts, and every day at that same table were seated twelve archbishops, ten bishops, the Patriarch of Saint Thomas, the Protopapas of Samarkand, and the Archprotopapas of Susa.”
“Isn’t that too many?” Solomon asked.
“No, no,” the Poet said, “we have to make the pope spit green, and the basileus of Byzantium, too. And add that the Priest has made a vow to visit the Holy Sepulcher with a great army to defeat the enemies of Christ. This will confirm what Otto said about him, and it will shut the pope’s mouth if by any chance he points out that John never managed to cross the Ganges. John is ready to try again; for this reason it’s worth going to find him and forming an alliance with him.”
“Now give me some ideas about populating the kingdom,” Baudolino said. “It has to have elephants, dromedaries, camels, hippopotamuses, panthers, onagers, white and red lions, mute cicadas, gryphons, tigers, llamas, hyenas, all the things we never see in our countries, and whose remains are precious for those who decide to go and hunt down there. And also men never seen, but spoken of in books on the nature of things and the universe….”
“Centaurs, horned men, fauns, satyrs, pygmies, cynocephali, giants forty cubits tall, one-eyed men,” Kyot suggested.
“Good, good. Write, Abdul, write it down,” Baudolino said.
For the rest, they had only to repeat what had been thought and said in previous years, with some embellishments. The land of Prester John dripped honey and was brimming with milk—and Rabbi Solomon was delighted to find echoes of Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy the land knew neither serpents nor scorpions, the river Physon flowed there, which emerges directly from the Earthly Paradise, and in the land were found … stones and sand, Kyot suggested. No, Rabbi Solomon replied, that’s the Sambatyon.
Shouldn’t we put the Sambatyon in here, too? Yes, but later. The Physon flows from the Earthly Paradise and therefore contains … emeralds, topazes, carbuncles, sapphires, chrysolite, onyx, beryls, amethysts, Kyot contributed. He had just arrived and didn’t understand why his friends displayed signs of nausea. (If you give me one more topaz I’ll swallow it, then shit it out the window, Baudolino cried.) By now, with the countless blest islands and paradises they had visited in the course of their research, they were all fed up with precious stones.
Abdul then proposed, since the kingdom was in the East, to name rare spices, and they chose pepper. Of which Boron said that it grows on trees infested with snakes, and when it is ripe you set fire to the trees and the snakes escape and hide in their lairs. Then you approach the tree, shake it, the pepper falls from the branches, and you cook it in some process that nobody knows.
“Now can we put the Sambatyon?” Solomon asked. “Oh, go ahead,” the Poet said, “then it’s clear that the ten lost tribes are on the other side of the river. Yes, let’s mention them explicitly, so Frederick can also find the lost tribes and add another gem to his crown.”
Abdul observed that the Sambatyon was necessary because it was the insuperable obstacle that thwarts the will and heightens desire. In other words: jealousy. Someone proposed also mentioning an underground stream rich in precious stones, but he refused to pursue the idea, for fear of hearing someone say topaz again. On the testimony of Pliny and Isidore, they decided instead to place salamanders in those lands, snakes with four legs that live amid flames. “It only has to be true and we’ll include it,” Baudolino said, “so long as we’re not telling fairy tales.”
The letter continued, insisting for a while on the virtue that reigned in those lands, where every pilgrim was welcomed with charity, no one was poor, there were no thieves, predators, misers, or flatterers. The Priest then declared that he believed there was no monarch in the world so rich or with so many subjects. To offer proof of these riches, which for that matter Sindbad had seen at Sarandib, there was then the great scene where the Priest described himself as he went to war against his enemies, preceded by thirteen crosses studded with jewels, each on a chariot, each chariot followed by ten thousand horsemen and a hundred thousand foot soldiers. When, on the contrary, the Priest rode out in peacetime, he was preceded by a wooden cross, recalling the passion of the Lord, and by a golden pot filled with earth, to remind everyone—and himself—that dust we are and unto dust we shall return. But so no one would forget that he who was passing was still the king of kings, here was another silver pot filled with gold. “If you put in any topazes, I’ll smash this jug over your head,” Baudolino warned. And Abdul, that time at least, omitted topazes.
“Write also that, down there, no adulterers exist, and no one can lie, and that anyone who lies dies that instant, or it’s as if he died, because he is outlawed and no one pays any further heed to him.”
“I’ve already written that there are no vices, no thieves….”
“That’s all right. Insist. The kingdom of Prester John must be a place where Christians succeed in keeping the divine commandments, while the pope has not managed to achieve anything similar with his children; indeed he himself lies, and worse than others. Anyway, insisting on the fact that nobody lies there, we make it self-evident that everything John says is true.” John continued, saying that every year he paid a visit, with a great army, to the tomb of the prophet Daniel in deserted Babylon, that in his country fish were caught whose blood was the source of purple, and that he exercised his sovereignty over the Amazons and the Brahmans. The Brahman idea seemed useful to Boron because the Brahmans had been seen by Alexander the Great when he reached the most extreme Orient imaginable. Hence their presence proved that in the
